Artist: Bill Ryder-Jones
Title: West Kirby County Primary
Official Release: nov 2015
Cover: front
Bitrate: 320 kbps, stereo


1 Tell Me You Don't Love Me Watching
2 Two To Birkenhead
3 Let's Get Away From Here
4 Daniel
5 Put It Down Before You Break It
6 Catharine and Huskisson
7 Wild Roses
8 You Can't Hide A Light With The Dark
9 Satellites
10 Seabirds


It’s almost 20 years since Bill Ryder-Jones joined The Coral, back when John Major was still in Downing Street, Britpop was at its apogee and the guitarist himself was only 13 years old. As the youngest member of the group, Ryder-Jones’ obvious ability – just listen to his nuanced, sure-handed playing on those first two albums – marked him out as something of a prodigy. But his post-Coral trajectory (which includes playing on and touring Arctic Monkeys' 'AM') has been closer to that of a late, if not outright laggard, bloomer. On 'Satellites', the slowcore reverie which serves as the penultimate track of his third (and best) solo album, he effectively issues a mea culpa to that effect when he sings of how, "I got lost in myself/ And time got lost as well". There are good reasons for that, of course – Ryder-Jones spent much of his lost time struggling with a series of mental health issues that came close to derailing his career entirely – but, in recent years, has found his groove as a solo artist: an unhurried, understated, sometimes lugubrious one, but a groove all the same.
When the end result is as good as this, however, who'd hold a few hours of lost sleep against him? Whereas Ryder-Jones' old band inhabited a colourful, self-contained world of soft drugs, spaghetti westerns and Scouse jabberwocky, his own sonic nook might seem smaller and more earthbound by comparison, but it's no less personal or poignant for that